


Thursday's Child

by Elizabeth_Woodville



Series: The Winchester Gospel [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Case Study In Castiel, All of the Emotions Every of the Emotions, Angst, Castiel and Aforementioned Emotions, I'm not sure what this is tbh, Origin Stories and Myths, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Shows Up to the Fandom 13 years Late With Starbucks, The Usual Amount of Quotes, Vague Attempts At Sounding Poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-25 06:47:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14971376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Woodville/pseuds/Elizabeth_Woodville
Summary: Castiel. What a story, that one. All these years, and still, nobody was quite sure what to do with him...





	Thursday's Child

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by 6x20: The Man Who Would Be King. Sequel in the works, because we don't get enough of Castiel.  
> (If we're being honest, the CW could give us a spinoff entirely based on Cas' misadventures with humanity, and I'd still say there isn't enough Cas. I'm not gonna apologize for loving that boy.)  
> Please let me know what you think. I'm needy and require validation and also I'm curious. What needs to be improved upon? What straight up sucks? Likes, dislikes? Hit me up!

In the beginning, there was Chuck.

He didn’t go by Chuck then, of course.

And his sister was there too. Her name was Amara.

As is wont to happen with siblings, they were very close. But, as with all siblings, there is such a thing as too much quality time.

So Chuck and Amara went their separate ways. Sometimes Chuck would send a Christmas card.

(Christianity wouldn’t emerge until several hundred, perhaps thousands of years later. And photography wouldn’t come for several centuries after that. But, call it what you will.)

 

Then he took in his hands the waters at the edge of the universe, the light of a dying star, the sands of time, and a dash of paprika, and thus He created the first angels.

This story is not about those angels. Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, Raphael…. Their stories have been written and rewritten with the changing of the tide.

When Fate sat down for a meeting with God, she and the Metatron scribed out the destinies of each and every creature that would ever exist. They described how Abel would die by Cain, how Richard the Third would die after being stabbed in the ass, how Elvis died on the john, how half of Europe would get wiped out by some over-zealous rats, et cetera.

Castiel, as it was written, was destined to be a very ordinary angel.

But he wasn’t.

Castiel, who flew into the breach of hell when even the archangels dared not. Castiel, who fell and rose with the consistency of male genitalia during the pubescent years. Castiel, who exceeded every expectation, who survived, who defied Heaven’s Mandate. Castiel, who fell in love; Castiel, who loved Humanity.

Castiel, who bore witness to the story of everything and anything, and, somehow, lived to tell the tale.

This is the story of a perfectly average, rather plain angel.

⛥⛥⛥

_And death shall have no dominion._

_Under the windings of the sea_

_They lying long shall not die windily;_

_Twisting on racks when sinews give way,_

_Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;_

_Faith in their hands shall snap in two,_

_And the unicorn evils run them through;_

_Split all ends up they shan't crack;_

_And death shall have no dominion._

⛥⛥⛥

Sometimes those with no faith at all lead far more virtuous lives than those who have excess of it. Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.

Such were the existences of Sam and Dean Winchester.

Dean, the renegade, who smoked and drank and cheated and slept around and got in more trouble than should be allowed.

“You’re only in trouble if you get caught,” he said one morning, using the counter to pop open a beer as he strolled around the bunker in a pair of Batman boxers, an unlit cigarette hanging between his teeth. “I’m sure I taught you better than that, Samuel.”

“I’m pretty sure you just quoted _Aladdin,”_ Sam said, rolling his eyes. “And I told you not to smoke in here.”

“It’s not lit, dumbass.”

“Fuck off.”

And Sam. Sam, who was good, who was honest and pious and gentle and sincere. Sam, who cried over the ASPCA commercials as a child, who still dared to believe in a higher power that didn’t always believe in him. Sam, who was old enough to know how cruel the world was, and yet still young enough to hope it could be changed.

And yet, there was a darkness in each of them, the kind of darkness that made God Himself a little uneasy.

⛥⛥⛥

After the angels, God decided he should try his hand at some more…. Arts and crafts.

And God created heaven and earth and the tides and the mountains and fields upon fields of daisies and cats and dogs and all sorts of birds and great whales and sliced bread and yo-yo’s and Niagara Falls and the Sahara and the Himalayas and all sorts of weird shit in Australia. The Grand Canyon was formed when Raphael pushed Gabriel off a cloud one day. Lucifer was kind of bored and ran off to claim Antarctica and fill it with pudgy little flightless birds.

Michael started piling rocks into mountains that would become the Andes, Gabriel was scavenging through the wild forests of Africa. And Chuck was feeling pretty good about everything.  

 And one day, he created man. It was kind of an accident. The little doughy dumplings that lived and died at the bottom of the sea were nothing of import. They were celestial Sea Monkeys.

Castiel could tell from the start that they were odd little creatures, but he never thought they’d become sentient. Or grow legs. That was kind of weird. There’s nothing so strange as watching your Sea Monkey baby grow up, working 9 to 5 at the Sea Monkey office in a goddamned Sea Monkey monkey suit. Driving home to his Sea Monkey house, Sea Monkey mortgage, a white picket Sea Monkey fence, the works. Sea Monkey Wife makes a Sea Monkey pot roast for her Sea Monkey CPA of a husband. Two-point-five Sea Monkey kids and a Sea Monkey dog playing out back. Sea Monkey teenagers sneaking out to smoke Sea Monkey pot and have Sea Monkey sex in the backseat of a Sea Monkey minivan. And they grow up, get married, have a pack of ugly-ass Sea Monkey babies and the cycle repeats itself. ‘Til one day they all die thinking, “golly gee, what a life well-lived!” and get shoved in a hole in the Sea Monkey cemetery and maybe just maybe, they make it into Sea Monkey heaven. And they line up at the pearly gates, and the St. Peter of Sea Monkeys lets ‘em in. Or maybe they just roast in Sea Monkey hell.  
The strangest feeling by far was the tenderness he felt towards them. He had to admire the chutzpah of that little gray fish that heaved itself up from the waters learned to walk and run and speak. God felt that too, and He decided to name him Adam.

Adam, like many a hamster or goldfish, didn’t live very long. He lived to see one son slaughter the other and go mad with power, and another third son, who just kind of faded into dust. Nobody could figure out what happened to Eve. Nobody gave two shits about what happened to Eve. God realized He was probably to blame for what happened with her, but decided to let bygones be bygones. So He never brought it up.

He always had His favorite humans. Muhammad, Jesus, Abraham, Einstein, Shakespeare, Madonna. The singer, not the Virgin Mother. Although she was okay too, he supposed. Even if she _so_ wasn’t a virgin.

The angels weren't supposed to pick favorites. They did anyway. Michael and Lucifer started dueling for vessels almost immediately. Gabriel just wanted Gene Wilder and Robert Downey, Jr. and a handful of attractive Venezuelan women. Raphael claimed all the pharmacists in the world. 

Castiel didn't get people. He didn't _get_ them either. He just got Thursday. Which was okay by him. He didn't realize he'd get his fair share of humanity in the millennia to come.

 _Thursday's Child has far to go,_ the children would sing in the schoolyard.

 _Yes,_ Castiel thought, _yes he did._

The first couple centuries were kind of like trying to play Jenga with two-by-fours. Except God was okay at Jenga. Or thought he was, when he created Stonehenge.

It was a mess. He’d leave the little shits alone for ten minutes and there’d be a war or a plague or some other disaster. He took a weekend hiatus, and Judas sold Jesus out for a handful of silver. He went to get the tea kettle off the stove, and the Beatles break up. He fell asleep writing a script and He woke up halfway through the Second World War. He turns His back for a Him-damned second, and that asshat from _The Apprentice_ became “leader” of the “free” “world”.

He loved His children, All of them, in spite of what Westboro Baptist thinks. But fuck it all to hell, He wanted, as most parents do, nothing more than to send the kids to a friends’ house, drink Himself silly and watch _Bachelor in Paradise._

Was that really too much to ask?

Yes, he thought. Apparently it was.

⛥⛥⛥

_“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”_

 

⛥⛥⛥

One Thursday, years ago, Castiel had sat with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Had stood beside the stake where Saint Joan had burned, on another Thursday morning in Rouen.

But standing with Dean Winchester in the dying light, in front of his mother’s grave was the hardest of all.

Dean had fled the bunker and drove to Lawrence as soon as the bomb was planted.

Cas found him there, standing under the dogwood trees as the sun started to die.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said softly. He hadn’t even turned to look at the angel.

He didn’t reply. They could both hear the missing greeting of, “ _Hello, Dean,”_ as if he’d screamed it.

“You know what she used to tell me?”

He did. He witnessed it. But he let Dean speak.

“She’d tell me that angels were watching over me. And I believed her.”

“They were.”

“You were.”

“There were others---”

“God, Cas…”

He smiled. “I’m no god, Dean.”

Dean had never believed in a god. But he believed in Cas.

“Promise me somethin’, Cas.”

“Anything.”

He couldn’t really promise _Anything,_  of course. He couldn’t promise that the world wouldn’t end, or that the Cubs would win the world series. He couldn’t even promise him peace at the end of the road. Couldn’t raise him from perdition. He liked to belive that he’d do it again and again and again…

But damn it, he was running out of Thursdays.

“If this…. When I…”

Cas closed his eyes, feeling the waves of emotion radiating from Dean.

“Watch out for Sammy,” Cas whispered. “Dean, you know that I will.”

Dean’s face looked ten years older. He was so different now than the man he pulled from hell eight years ago. Dean was so timeless to him, he scarce remembered how short human life was. How so many humans didn’t get enough time. There was a time he would’ve thought that this made angels superior. But then he realized: the only difference between man and angel was that humans felt things.

He saw, in his mind’s eye, the Dean of eight years ago, sitting on the hood of the Impala.

“I wish I couldn’t feel anything, Sammy,” he’d said quietly. “I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing.”

“How weak,” Uriel had said with a dark chuckle. “Are you certain, Father, that _this_ mewling schoolboy is the true Michael sword?”

God didn’t answer.

It perplexed Castiel. It wasn’t until he fell that he realized.

Dean Winchester’s greatest strength was that very thing he hid away, the thing he saw as his weakness.

Dean Winchester could love. He could feel things, all sorts of things,

He’d told Dean this once. Dean was heavily intoxicated, and was letting slip some things sober Dean would never say. Drunk Dean still laughed at him, making an uncouth joke about a puppet and “being a real boy”.

Castiel wished he could have the kind of feelings Dean Winchester felt.  

The human part of him, that little piece of him that had fallen, the part that loved, wanted to reach out and hold him. Dean was never a fan of that kind of thing.

But Castiel did.

And Dean let him, and they stood there in their comfortable silence, gripping each other tight as if to raise themselves to heaven and freedom and another day together.

They stood there in comfortable silence until the tear-tracks dried, until they heard the rumble of Sam’s car approaching.

As Sam approached, he felt Dean pressing something into his hand.

A small silver ring.

A ring that had belonged to Henry Winchester years and years ago. That Millie gave to her son, who kept it as the only reminder of a man who had abandoned them. He gave it to Mary, one hot July night in 1974, sitting on the hood of the Impala, the same way their sons would thirty years later.

“I’ve been saving up,” he’d said, “trying to get that pretty blue one, with your birthstone. But I hope this’ll do for now.”

“I like this one better,” Mary had whispered.

He slipped it onto his hand, remembering the sight of Jimmy’s wedding ring on that same hand years ago.

 

 

⛥⛥⛥

James Patrick Novak was born on July 10, 1973.

His parents were the great-grandchildren of Polish Catholic migrants who had come to America following the tumult of a fairly minor conflict between Poland and Russia in 1919. They were devout, kind, and seeking refuge, and they were indiscriminable from the thousands of other immigrants and refugees that would arrive on ships from the Old World.

Jimmy was a very precocious child, who grew into a quiet, calm young man. He was plain, simple, and remarkably unremarkable, like any good midwestern boy. He was in dental school when he met Amelia. As soon as they got out of school, they married in Jimmy’s father’s church on a rainy Thursday afternoon. Claire Elizabeth Novak was born two years later, in December of 1997.

The family of three lived in peace and quiet and suburban mediocrity for almost eleven years.

What would Jimmy say?

About Claire, becoming a hunter. Amelia, dying.

About Castiel, fallen from God, fallen from grace.

⛥⛥⛥

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lucifer said. He was peering out over the ocean with a pair of opera glasses.

Michael looked unfazed, sitting in a lawnchair. He turned a page of the book he was reading.“What’s necessary is not always a good idea.”

Chuck furrowed his brow. Lucifer didn’t often make sense, but when he did, he was the sole voice of reason. But Michael was trustworthy.

“But why?” said a young boy. He had been playing in the sand, kneeling where the water met the sand, looking at shells and rocks. He couldn’t have been more than a few centuries old.

“Sh-h,” an older sister replied. “Do not question the will of Our Father, Castiel.”

Castiel was quiet for a moment. “Oh. Okay.”

A small splash came from the water as a tiny gray fish heaved itself onto the shore.

“Father,” Castiel called. “Father, what is that fish doing?”

Lucifer and Michael rolled their eyes. It was Gabriel who smiled at him, took him by the arm and led him back toward the sand. “Don’t step on him, Cas. Dad’s got big plans for him.”

 

⛥⛥⛥

_“I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.”_

⛥⛥⛥

 

God kicked his second son out of the house after the whole Incident with Eve. It would be a story replayed many times throughout history: The Good Son and the Decidedly Not Good Son. Cain versus Abel, Jacob versus Esau, J.R. and Bobby Ewing, Peyton and Eli Manning.

And don’t get him started on the Kardashians. Women play by whole different set of rules, and man, do they play to win.

Either way, he figured it’s what kids did. They rebelled, they fought their siblings. Sometimes they ran off and fell for humanity like Castiel. Sometimes they ran off, invented booze and bread with the Egyptians, created the platypus as a ‘fuck you’ to Daddy Dearest, and got a Mesopotamian farm girl knocked up all in a day’s work. Yeah, Gabriel was something of a problem child.

Sometimes they pulled a Lucifer, slammed their bedroom door closed with a ‘No Celestial Beings Allowed’ sign on the door and Nine Inch Nails blaring through the whole damn house after deciding to take over the world.

And parenting books wouldn’t emerge for another several millenia.

 

⛥⛥⛥

_They have little use. They are best as objects of torment….  Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have. But what is there for a man to do with his life?  They burn beautifully with a blue flame. When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . ._

⛥⛥⛥

The Winchester boys were trouble from the start.

It took thousands of years to solidify the Winchester bloodline. From Cain and Abel to the Plantagenets to Sarah Lockwood of Winchester Mystery fame, the Winchesters were the result of a millennia of chaos.

Sam had to do one of those family genealogy maps in middle school. It was greatly fabricated, citing Alec Guinness as his grandfather and John Stamos as his uncle.

He’d asked Dean and Dad.

“Irish,” John had said. “Came over during the potato famine.”

This was a lie, of course. Henry Winchester’s twice great-grandparents came over at the turn of the century to found the New England chapterhouse of the British Men of Letters. John would never know this. He’d invented his own family history as a child, the same way Sam did.

“If we’re Irish, why don’t we have red hair?” Dean would ask, years later, pouring through the Men of Letters Archives.

“Actually, Scotland has a significantly larger percentage of redheads,” Sam would reply.

“Sounds fake.”

Rowena would come along soon enough to prove Dean wrong. Although, by the time she entered the picture, Dean had much bigger worries than his heritage.

But it was a fun game to play. Like making a chemical reaction of all the things that would make Sam and Dean Sam and Dean.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Anael said. She was watching a young, newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Winchester screw themselves silly in the backseat of a 1967 Chevy Impala.

“We mustn’t question Our Father’s will, Anael,” Castiel said. “If these humans are to conceive the Righteous Man, we should be all too happy to watch over them.”

“Kinky,” said Gabriel. “Never knew you had it in you, little bro.”

 ⛥⛥⛥

 

Sam was harder to wrap his head around.

Over the years, he'd had many strange encounters with Sam. 

You see, he came to Sam to ask questions.

"Why do humans choose to harm each other so?"

"Same reason the angels do, Cas. Ignorance and power."

"What is sexual intercourse like?"

"Umm... Maybe you... Just... go ask Dean."

"What is the function of a rubber duck?"

"You watched _Chamber of Secrets_  without me?"

And so on. Dean always said it was karma biting Sam in the ass: Young Sammy had been the master of questions.

He went to Dean for advice. 

_ Look both ways before you cross the street next time, dumbass. _

_ Never take a joint from a guy named Don, okay? That’s all you need to know. _

_ Don't watch porn when other people are in the room. Or, at least wear headphones. And for Christ's sake, don't talk about it. _

_ Shut up and eat your Spaghetti-O's. _

He should write a list.

The greatest lesson Sam and Dean taught him, was what it meant to feel like your heart was falling.

This happened at least once every six months. Dean said it was because Castiel was delicate when it came to feelings.

Sam said Dean was emotionally stunted.

Dean threw a bottletop and hit Sam square in the forehead.

And so on.

He liked talking with Sam. Sam would tell him things without ever being asked. He'd tell him stories of him and Dean growing up, of life at Stanford, research and facts he'd never learned, despite all his time on Earth.

But Sam was very conflicted. 

And, after watching  _Star Wars,_ Castiel could safely say that conflict, whether in or among humans, was a very frightening thing.

Sam would sit and talk about the time he and Dean spent the night at the Omaha Public Library, but he would also sit and brood and ponder.

He did have quite a bit to ponder.

This was one of those times. It was a Thursday. Sam had been recovering from the Toni Ordeal, as Dean had taken to calling it. He wasn’t in prime shape, but he seemed to be over the worst of it.

However, he seemed unable to sleep. Which, for the Winchesters, wasn’t unusual in itself. 

Sam was sitting in the library, flipping aimlessly through a book.

“You seem troubled.”

“How do I tell her, Cas?

“What do you mean?”

Sam looked up, and he looked so exceedingly weary, Castiel had to pause. Sam handed him the book.

The thin, worn, leatherbound pages of John Winchester’s journal. 

“How do I sit down with my mom, who I’ve never really known, and tell her that the man she loved died when she did?”

“Sam….”

“Do you think she knows how he’d leave us in shitty motel rooms while he hunted? How Dean was more of a parent by the time he was eight than my Dad ever was?”

Cas remained silent. 

“The Christmases he said he’d be there but he wasn’t? The birthdays he straight up forgot? How every goddamn year, on November 2nd, he’d stumble home drunk off his ass, and my brother had to be the adult?

Dean idolized the man! That same man who would come home, and beat the shit out of him, the same man who made him wake up at 4 a.m. for training drills from the time he was nine. The one who taught him how to lay the salt lines and left him to babysit.”

There was this one time, in Des Moines, when he said he’d be home in three days. But it ended up being over a month. And Dean wouldn’t call Pastor Jim, or Uncle Bobby, because he had so much blind faith in the man. And about three weeks in, we’d run out of cash, and food, and he’d----”

“I know.”

And Cas did know. 

It was one of those things that would race through Dean’s mind when things were rough. When he was begging and pleading for some divine intervention to save his little brother from this life. Castiel heard. And nothing hurt him more.

But, now, Sam was on a tirade. “He had to go out and hustle pool or-- or-- whore himself out to keep me fed! And all I did was bitch about how I was tired of peanut butter sandwiches for every meal.”

“Sam.”

“And he ended up in the hospital, Cas.” he said, putting his head in his hands. “Because he hadn’t ate in six days, and I thought he was dying. Bobby came and got us. And Dad never even came to see him in the hospital. Can you believe that?“

He could, in fact, believe it. He knew a thing or two about absent fathers. 

Sam ran a hand down his face before carding a hand through his hair. He sat there for a moment, entangled in the past. 

Castiel remembered, in his mind's eye, a young John Winchester, doing the same thing, sitting in the military recruiter's office.

“Oh, fuck it,” Sam said finally, snatching up the book. “I’ll just take her some tea.”

So he did. And Castiel was left to wonder.

⛥⛥⛥

_This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth_

_The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,_

_And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;_

_The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,_

_And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely_

_His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,_

_And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,_

_Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,_

_This many summers in a sea of glory,_

_But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride_

_At length broke under me and now has left me,_

_Weary and old with service, to the mercy_

_Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me._

_Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:_

_I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched_

_Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!_

_There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,_

_That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,_

_More pangs and fears than wars or women have:_

_And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,_

_Never to hope again._

 

⛥⛥⛥

Dean Christopher Winchester came into the world the same way he would inevitably leave it (all several times): kicking, screaming, and covered in blood.

It was a typical midwestern blizzard. The snow was bad, but the north wind blowing across the Kansas prairie was worse. The wind was howling, as if all the monsters that would one day meet their doom as a result of that tiny little boy were crying out in outrage.

It wasn’t until the day after that Castiel finally got a peek at Michael’s vessel.

He was swaddled in his mother’s arms, small and pink and peculiarly delicate and fragile for a sword of heaven.

Castiel wasn’t quite sure what to make of him.

His mother was fiercely protective of him immediately. And, after seventeen hours of labor, she certainly had the right to be.

John had cried. Had wept openly as he held his son, blissfully unaware of the future.

Unaware that one day, he’d drill the opposite message into that baby’s mind: _Soldiers don’t cry, son. Unless…_

Unless it was  at night, in the dim glow of a neon vacancy sign, stifling their sobs in their pillows so their sons wouldn’t hear _._ Unless it was in the emergency room at 2 a.m., with a screaming, teething infant and a near-delirious four-year-old whose cold had rapidly turned into pneumonia.

Unless the world itself was ending.

The Winchester boys didn’t cry when the world itself was ending.

They marched on.

They never really stopped, Castiel would realize. It wasn’t until years later, when he himself was human, and he realized that was just the way humans were.

It was their Manifest Destiny. They couldn’t stop, even if they tried. And Sam and Dean, they’ve come too far to stop now. If there’s one thing the Winchester Boys had  learned, it’s that no matter what happens, you gotta keep going. You keep moving, keep trekking, keep forging ahead. You keep smiling. Because the minute they stopped, they knew they’d  look back at all the broken things in their wake, and finally they'd fall apart, and one day the time will come when even God can't piece them back together again. So they kept their heads up kept their emotions in check, kept walking even when they were certain they’d fall, even when the northern wind and the rising waves were pushing them back and they're moving against an icy current and would like nothing more than to let go… when the scene fades to black and the rest is silence.

Until the time comes when the world ends, act like everything's fine. Surely, an Angel of the Lord could convince himself that it's true. Live in that lie, and you'll be invincible.

As of Thursday, January 25th, 1979, when the angel Castiel first laid eyes on father and son, John Winchester was very much unaware that the little boy in his arms, would, in fact, be the death of him.

⛥⛥⛥

“We must send someone,” Michael was saying. “The longer the Righteous Man remains in hell, the closer we get to the First Seal.”

Uriel shrugged. “The cherubim are pretty expendable.”

“No, you doucheface! Send a seraph,” Gabriel drawled. “Bitches _love_ seraphs.”

”Send Balthazar,” said Zachariah. “He’s so thick-witted, the flames of hell won’t be able to stand him.”

“Send Zachariah,” said Balthazar. “He’s such a cunt, he’ll fit right in.”

“Remind me again why Michael can’t go?”

“I’ve duties here, the legion---”

Hannah looked startled. “Because why would _Michael_ seek out Lucifer?”

“It’s gonna happen sooner or later--” Raphael started.

Benjamin scoffed. “That doesn’t mean we march right in---”

“Apocalypse Now versus Apocalypse Slightly Later? Seriously?” Anael raised an eyebrow.

“It’s better than a holy crusade through hell, ”

“Sounds bloody brilliant if you ask me,” Balthazar said.

“Good thing no one is asking you, then,” Naomi snapped.

_“ENOUGH!”_

He’d heard enough.

“Only one angel can make it through hell and back. We can’t send any more.”

“Thanks, Pops. I’m honored, but I must decline---”

Michael sighed melodramatically. “No, Gabriel.”

“Wh-- huh?”

“Castiel,” spake the Lord. “What say you?”

Castiel blanched. “I go, Father, if it is your will.”

“And if it is my will?”

Castiel smiled slightly. “Thy will be done, in hell as it is on earth as it is in heaven.”

“Kiss ass,” Uriel muttered.

“Pot, kettle,” Ishim murmured.

Michael cleared his throat, looking uncertain. “Castiel, angel of the Lord, divine messenger of Our Father. You will set forth tomorrow to raise the Righteous Man, the celestial sword, from the depths of Hell.”

“Amen,” Gabriel said. “And good luck, kiddo. You’re gonna need it. Rumor has it Dean-o’s in there _pretty_ deep.”

Anael smacked him upside the head.

So Castiel bid his father and brothers and sisters farewell and set off for hell.

⛥⛥⛥

_“It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.”_

⛥⛥⛥

_Hell is murky._

 

He’d heard stories of hell.

Growing up in heaven, it was like a bedtime story parents told their children to scare them into submission. Except it was mandated by the Heavenly Father himself.

So the fear was very, very real.

 

In the beginning, there was limbo. A vast hall of mirrors and marble decorated with columns of dessicated humans, sitting. Waiting in line.

Some screamed. Some sobbed. Begged for mercy. Some remained silent.

Then, the Trinity unfolds: the lion, the leopard, the wolf, all hungry for revenge. Craving not flesh, but sin.

Death is not proud, Castiel would learn. So he prayed. But prayers get kind of jumbled in Hell. Or maybe that was just his mind.

_Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…. And undone… And unraveled…. And hung out upon the rack. Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death…._

(but wherefore could I not pronounce ‘Amen’?)

 

On the first day, there was Lust. And it was the thick, solid silence, like the tropics in July. And the silence was desire. He could hear the humming of hearts on the sleeves of the dead. Hell-birds and harpies would peck and scream and devour the burning hearts. He carried the heat like a crucifix, and felt his wings being weighed down, farther and farther downward….

On the Second Day, came gluttony. Those who lived to the highest. Too much can damn you as sure as none at all.

 _More, more, more,_ whispered the winds.

And then there were none…. none at all…

 

_Avarice._

Castiel was straining against the weight of worldly things, bearing so much, yet taking much more. The misery and the miserly concentric

It is temperate, but the wind bites shrewdly, nipping with an eager air. So anxious to devour the devourers. Take from the rich and break the richer, tearing them limb from limb, burned to death by gold like Midas was.

_Take from them everything._

 

The dead don’t rest: they wreak havoc

Anger, born of fear, mother to hate, mother of suffering. And so they suffer. Souls and tempers lost. Castiel soars wearily over swirling, spiraling towers of red hot fury.

The screams of the damned ring through the streets like bells in a cathedral. Obsidian mountains, crimson skies, crimson blood dripping down slopes like glacier water. But dirty, corrupted.

The droplets spilled over the Circle like rain, washing away what can be cleansed, and shattering all that might remain.

 

And in the Sixth Circle,

Did Lucifer decree: “And as it be in hell, so may it be on earth.”

For hell is empty and all the devils are here. The people here, burned in hell as they did on earth. Crucified, but not to save.

No souls are spared by a burning woman on a stake so much as a man, dead on a cross does, Castiel observed.

Martyrs for the wrong causes, for gods that don’t exist. Baptized in hellfire.

A grove of black charred trees. A winding river of dull gray mists and wisps. Like candle smoke.

People were in the trees. The spirits of suicides, damned for eternity

Naked bodies with slit, bleeding wrists. Gunshot wounds and brains seeping out into the waters...

They floated past him in the river, their faces pale and bloated, fingertips blue and frosty, bodies adorned with garlands, hemlock and nightshade woven into thick braids. Bodies on the shores, too, coated with black sand like dead fish after a storm.

Castiel suddenly remembered The Flood. The people and animals that died because God commanded it.

 _This isn’t right,_ he thought. _Heaven is good._

But this kind of punishment… it didn’t fit the crime. It _wasn’t_ a crime. These were his Father’s creation, and therefore his kinsmen. This was wrong, he thought, so very, very wrong. There were many souls that should not be damned. 

If he had the strength, he would carry each of these wronged souls to heaven with him.

And for the first time, he found himself questioning his Father’s will.

Nothing is what it seems in the circle of shadows. Like looking at a mirror reflected in a mirror of mirrors. Deceivers and illusions, even in death. False flatterers, paper faces on parade, false prophets.

 _Fallaces sunt rerum species._ The Romans had it right. Damn Pagans.

Souls go lower, flames climb higher over the skeleton trees before disappearing into the steam.

 

Number Nine is a world submerged, peering out from a glacial cage. Frozen and frigid, and burning with cold. The Devil’s Cage is empty. But all along the walls of the citadel, were cages for the shattered husks of human beings that had lived lives deserving of the very depths of the pit.

Castiel felt the frost cling to his skin, ice crystalizing in his wings. They had turned black, as though charred from the flames or infected with a celestial gangrene. His breath turned to vapor before him, and the wind howled and screamed in his face. Or perhaps that was the screams of the damned, ringing and reverberating in his ears.

He wanders, frozen and wishing he were numb, until he finds him.

Dean Winchester.

Michael’s vessel was holding a knife to the throat of a young man. He was begging, screaming, pleading…

“Come with me,” Castiel whispered. “I’m here to save you.”

He could hear the mortal’s thoughts.

_Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?_

_Oh, God, what have I done?_

Castiel didn’t have an answer for either of those. So he put his fingers to the man’s forehead, sending him to sleep.

He grabbed Dean Winchester by the arm, and started his ascent to the mortal world.

It was a Thursday. 

⛥⛥⛥

_"Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that."_

⛥⛥⛥ 

 


End file.
